fragment wywiadu:
"(...)Q: Next week you'll be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the National Book Awards. Are you still writing science fiction these days?

- I never wrote science fiction ever in my life, except for "Fahrenheit 451." "The Martian Chronicles" is fantasy. Most of my short stories are fantasy. Science fiction is the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.(...) "

Pillar Of Fire: A Drama (1972) - Play. This edition issued prior to the collection Pillar Of Fire and Other Plays. Only 35 to 40 copies were prepared for Bradbury's use.

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972) - Plays

When Elephants Last In The Dooryard Bloomed (1973) - Poetry

Zen in the Art of Writing and The Joy of Writing: Two Essays (1973) - Essays. Capra Press.

That Son of Richard III (1974) - Pamphlet. Limited edition of 400. Published by Roy A. Squires.

Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975) - Plays

Long After Midnight (1976) - Stories

That Ghost, that Bride of Time: Excerpts from a Play-in-Progress (1976) - Play. Based on the Moby Dick mythology. Dedicated to Melville. Numbered limited edition of 400. First 150 copies signed by Bradbury.

Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run 'Round in Robot Towns (1977) - Poetry. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

The animated cartoon is just about the purest, least arguable, most invigorating art form invented since mankind did shadow shows with wriggling fingers, then trapped them in cave- wall graffiti 200 generations ago...

I wonder how many men, hiding their youngness, rise as I do, Saturday mornings, filled with the hope that Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck will be there waiting as our one true always and forever salvation? ("Why Cartoons Are Forever" by Ray Bradbury, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 3, 1989.)
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ASIMOV, ISAAC:

One could call him a jackdaw, but that wouldn't be correct, jackdaws focus on and snatch bright objects of no particular weight. Isaac is in the mountain moving business, but he does not move them, but eat them...

People have said Isaac is a workaholic. Nonsense. He has gone mad with love in ten dozen territories... when Isaac departs earth and arrives Up There [he'll] write twenty-five new books of the Bible. And that only the first week! (1989)
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BRADBURY:

When people ask me where I get by imagination, I simply lament, "God, here and there, makes madness a calling."
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CENSORSHIP:

There is more than one way to burn a book.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh- day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. ("Coda" 1979)

...I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from [Fahrenheit 451]. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. ("Coda" 1979)

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo- Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. ("Coda" 1979)
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CLONING

Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid. .(Salon Magazine, 2001)

COMPUTERS & THE INTERNET:

Bill Gates and his partners are flimflamming America. (1995)

I don't understand this whole thing about computers and the superhighway. Who wants to be in touch with all of those people? (Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1995.)

Who do you want to talk to? All those morons who are living across the world somewhere? You don't even want to talk to them at home. (On the topic of Internet chat rooms)

Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time -- And a lot of people are doing that. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel. (Salon.com, August 29, 2001)
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EDUCATION:

The main problem is with our education, of course. First-grade teachers for many years now have not been teaching reading and we have to encourage them to pull up their socks and begin to pay attention so that the whole school system doesn't go to hell. People are getting into high school who can't read. It's stupid, isn't it? It's crazy.

The jails are full of one million non-readers. We can't let it happen again. If you allow another generation to grow up to be 12 years old.... without the ability to read, write, and think, we're sunk. If they can't read, if they can't write, if they can't think, they become criminals. We've already lost two generations. Unless we teach reading intensely and completely in kindergarten and first grade, the whole civilization goes to hell.

With computers, kids can connect and search libraries and the Encyclopedia Britannica, but if you don't teach them to read in the first place, they're not going to [log on], are they? (Speech to National School Board Association, 1995)

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn. (Faber in Fahrenheit 451)
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THE FUTURE:

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better. (from "Beyond 1984: The People Machines")
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HEAD VS HEART:

If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down. (Brown Daily Herald. March 24, 1995.)

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
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LIBRARIES:

No use going to class unless you go to the library.
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PHILOSOPHY:

Recreate the world in your own image and make it better for your having been here. (Speech at Brown University, 1995)

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made up or paid for in factories.

POLITICS:

[George W. Bush is] wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a s***head and we're glad to be rid of him. And I'm not talking about his sexual exploits. I think we have a chance to do something about education.... It doesn't matter who does it -- Democrats or Republicans -- but it's long overdue. (Salon.com, August 29, 2001)

The great thing is our counter-revolution that occurred in the polls a few weeks ago. I think it's great. All the Democrats are out and the Republicans are going to have a chance in a couple of years. It doesn't make a difference what party you belong to--it's a chance for a fresh start. It's very exciting. (Speaking about the "Republican Revolution" of 1994)

PROBLEM SOLVING:

At 7 a.m. all my voices start talking inside my head, and when it reaches a certain pitch I jump out and trap them before they're gone. Or I shower and then the voices talk. You solve problems not by thinking directly of them but allowing them to ferment in their own time.

You feed yourself. Make sure you have all the information, whether it's aesthetic, scientific, mathematical, I don't care what it is. Then you walk away from it and let it ferment. You ignore it and pretend you don't care. Next thing you know, the answer comes.
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SCIENCE FICTION:

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

Ray Douglas Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, on August 22, 1920.
He was the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Esther Marie Moberg Bradbury. They gave him the middle name "Douglas," after the actor, Douglas Fairbanks.

He never lived up to his namesake's reputation for swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. Instead, Bradbury's great adventures would take place behind a typewriter, in the realm of imagination. Today, as an author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, lecturer, poet and visionary, Ray Bradbury is known as one of America's greatest creative geniuses.

Bradbury's early childhood in Waukegan was characterized by his loving extended family. These formative years provided the foundations for both the author and his stories.

In Bradbury's works of fiction, 1920s Waukegan becomes "Greentown," Illinois. Greentown is a symbol of safety and home, and often provides a contrasting backdrop to tales of fantasy or menace. In Greentown, Bradbury's favorite uncle sprouts wings, traveling carnivals conceal supernatural powers, and his grandparents provide room and board to Charles Dickens.

Between 1926 and 1933, the Bradbury family moved back and forth between Waukegan and Tucson, Arizona. In 1931, young Ray began writing his own stories on butcher paper.

In 1934, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, California. As a teenager, Bradbury often roller-skated through Hollywood, trying to spot celebrities. He befriended other talented and creative people, like special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns.

In fact, it was Burns who gave Bradbury his first pay as a writer -- for contributing a joke to the Burns & Allen Show.

Bradbury attended Los Angeles High School. He was active in the drama club and planned to become an actor.

However, two of his teachers recognized a greater talent in Bradbury, and encouraged his development as a writer. Snow Longley Housh taught him about poetry and Jeannet Johnson taught him to write short stories. Over 60 years later, Bradbury's work bears the indelible impressions left by these two women.

As his high school years progressed, Bradbury grew serious about becoming a writer. Outside of class, he contributed to fan publications and joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League. At school, he improved his grades and joined the Poetry Club.

Bradbury's formal education ended with his high school graduation in 1938. However, he continued to educate himself. He sold newspapers on Los Angeles street corners all day, but spent his nights in the library. The hours between newspaper editions were spent at his typewriter.

His first published short story was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma," printed in 1938 in Imagination!, an amateur fan magazine. In 1939, Bradbury published four issues of his own fan magazine, Futuria Fantasia, writing much of the content himself. His first paid publication, a short story titled "Pendulum," appeared in Super Science Stories in 1941.

As he honed his writing skills, Bradbury often looked to established writers for guidance. During those early years, his mentors included Henry Kuttner, Leigh Brackett, Robert Heinlein and Henry Hasse.

At last, in 1942, Bradbury wrote "The Lake" -- the story in which he discovered his distinctive writing style. The following year, he gave up selling newspapers and began to write full-time. In 1945 his short story "The Big Black and White Game" was selected for Best American Short Stories. That same year, Bradbury traveled through Mexico to collect Indian masks for the Los Angeles County Museum.

In 1946, he met his future wife, Marguerite "Maggie" McClure. A graduate of George Washington High School (1941) and UCLA, Maggie was working as a clerk in a book shop when they met.

Ray and Maggie were married in the Church of the Good Shepherd, Episcopal in Los Angeles on September 27, 1947. Ray Harryhausen served as the best man.

That same year also marked the publication of Bradbury's first collection of short stories, entitled Dark Carnival.

The first of the Bradbury's four daughters, Susan, was born in 1949. Susan's sisters, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra were born in 1951, 1955 and 1958, respectively.

Bradbury's reputation as a leading science fiction writer was finally established with the publication of The Martian Chronicles in 1950. The book describes man's attempt to colonize Mars, the effects of colonization on the Martians, and the colonists' reaction to a massive nuclear war on Earth.

As much a work of social criticism as of science fiction, The Martian Chronicles reflects America's anxieties in the early 1950's: the threat of nuclear war, the longing for a simpler life, reactions against racism and censorship, and the fear of foreign political powers.

Another of Bradbury's best-known works, Fahrenheit 451, was released in 1953. It is set in a future in which a totalitarian government has banned the written word. Montag enjoys his job as a professional book-burner. But he begins to question his duties the when he learns of a time when books were legal and people did not live in fear. Montag begins stealing books marked for destruction and meets a professor who agrees to educate him. When his pilfering is discovered, he must run for his life.

Bradbury's work has won innumerable honors and awards, including the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Benjamin Franklin Award (1954), the Aviation-Space Writer's Association Award for Best Space Article in an American Magazine (1967), the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. His work was also included in the Best American Short Stories collections for 1946, 1948 and 1952.

Perhaps Bradbury's most unusual honor came from the Apollo astronaut who named Dandelion Crater after Bradbury's novel, Dandelion Wine.

Bradbury's lifetime love of cinema fuelled his involvement in many Hollywood productions, including The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (a version of his story, "The Fog Horn"), Something Wicked This Way Comes (based on his novel,) and director John Huston's version of Moby Dick. His animated film about the history of flight, Icarus Montgolfier Wright, was nominated for an academy award

Over the decades, there have also been many attempts to adapt Bradbury's stories for television. Commendable examples include episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and Bradbury's Emmy-winning teleplay for The Halloween Tree.

But not all adaptations were so successful. For instance, Bradbury was seriously disappointed with a Martian Chronicles network miniseries, broadcast in 1979.

Looking for more creative control, Bradbury turned to the relative freedom of cable television and developed his own series. Ray Bradbury Theater ran from 1986 until 1992 and allowed the author to produce televised versions of his own stories.

Even while working on TV series, novels, short stories, screenplays and radio dramas, Bradbury continues to publish collections of his plays, poems and essays.

What does he do for an encore, you ask?

Beyond his literary contributions, Bradbury also serves as an "idea consultant" for various civic, educational and entertainment projects. He provided the concept and script for the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair and contributed to Disney's Spaceship Earth at EPCOT and the Orbitron at the Disneyland parks in Paris and Anaheim.

As a creative consultant to the Jon Jerde Partnership, he also helped create trend-setting shopping/entertainment plazas, including the Glendale Galleria in Los Angeles and Horton Plaza in San Diego. These innovative malls (and their many imitators) reflect Bradbury's vision of a "small-town pl

Gość: Nu!IP: 212.106.134.* 15.05.02, 17:28

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Questions for Ray Bradbury

Martian Tourist

The writer who gave us the future talks about the technology of the present.

Q: Next week you'll be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the National Book Awards. Are you still writing science fiction these days?

I never wrote science fiction ever in my life, except for "Fahrenheit 451." "The Martian Chronicles" is fantasy. Most of my short stories are fantasy. Science fiction is the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.

Q: What are you reading now?

I read George Bernard Shaw, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Eudora Welty. Is that a good list?

Q: No science fiction?

That would be incest. You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn. I read Jules Verne, H.G. Wells. When you're older you want to learn from other people.

Q: With science unfolding at such a heady pace, do you think that maybe science writing or even science itself has taken the place of science fiction?

Not for a minute. We've always been ahead of them. We're leading the way. We went to Mars long before they headed there. They haven't made it there yet.

Q: Your story, "The Veldt," about children playing in a special room that becomes the African veldt, is essentially a virtual reality blueprint.

Yes, when I meet with these people, these technologists, they call me Papa.

Q: Are there other examples of events or technologies in your writings that have come to pass?

That's not my business. My business is to prevent the future. "Fahrenheit 451" postulates a lot of things I didn't want to have happen.

Q: How do you feel about some of our present-day science fiction realities or prospects? Like human cloning?

Well, why would you do that? You marry someone and - I've got four daughters. I've already cloned!

Q: What about the possibility that some country might use cloning to create dispensable soldiers or -

You've been reading James Bond too much. It's not going to happen. The Russians had the answer to this. They killed everyone, and the people that were left were the clones.

Q: A few years ago you said: "I don't understand this whole thing about computers and the superhighway. Who wants to be in touch with all those people?" Still feel that way?

Sure, why should I be in touch with all these people?

Q: You don't use e-mail at all?

I don't have a computer. A computer's a typewriter. I already have a typewriter.

Q: How about A.T.M.'s?

Why go to a machine when you could go to a human being? Everything we're doing is inefficient. I called the other day to change an appointment with my hearing- aid people, and it took two minutes, because they have everything on the computer. If they'd had a pad and pencil, you could change it in five seconds.

Q: If you could eliminate one invention from the last 100 years, what would it be?

The automobile. We've killed two million people now. It's been a major war, and we're not paying any attention to it.

Q: There's been a lot of talk about possibly extending human life by 50 or 100 years. Do you ever feel like maybe you were born just a little bit too early?

I was born at the right time. It's a great age. When I was born, in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all these things.

Q: What about the possibility of going into space, setting foot on Mars? Don't you wish you could do that?

Sure, of course. But since it's not going to happen, I don't worry about it.

Q: There's always Mir. If you hurry, you could get on Mir before they pull it down.

It's a bore. I want to go to Mars. Who wants to be up there, just traveling around the earth, doing nothing?

-Mary Roach

Reprinted with permission from New York Times Magazine
November 2000

Gość: Nu!IP: 212.106.134.* 15.05.02, 17:51

Ray Bradbury is on fire!
At 81, the veteran author of sci-fi classics "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles" is suddenly very hot in Hollywood.

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By James Hibberd

Aug. 29, 2001 | Author Ray Bradbury, now 81 and recovering from a stroke, has recently become the most sought-after writer in Hollywood.

Renny Harlin ("Die Hard 2," "Cliffhanger") has signed to direct Bradbury's time-travel adventure "A Sound of Thunder." Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile") will direct new productions of "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451." Bradbury is also adapting his short story collection "The Illustrated Man" for the Sci-Fi Channel and says he's writing a script based on his novella "Frost and Fire" that will be filmed next year. And the literary establishment has also recognized him recently. Last November the National Book Foundation gave its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to Bradbury.

The unprecedented interest by Hollywood in Bradbury's work is coincidentally timed to one of the author's major publishing anniversaries. Fifty years ago, the first printed version of "Fahrenheit 451" debuted in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

A future shock masterpiece, "Fahrenheit 451" was largely overlooked during recent millennial sci-fi retrospectives in favor of other dystopian works such as "1984," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Brave New World." The novel's famed central premise (a society where firefighters burn censored books) has long suggested a metaphorical fantasy rather than serious prognostication.

Far from an abstract nightmare, "Fahrenheit 451" is now disturbing because its culture no longer seems disturbing. And its dated terminology, such as calling headset radios "seashell ear thimbles," constantly remind modern readers the novel was written 50 years ago and that its culture -- our culture -- was intended only as a horrifying possibility.

One "Fahrenheit 451" prediction was the technological evolution, and moral devolution, of television news. In the novel, a fireman protagonist accused of hiding illegal books is pursued by a carnivorous news media seeking to satiate the blood lust of home viewers. As the fireman flees down the street, chased by helicopters, he sees himself through his neighbors' windows, running on their television screens.

The day after news helicopters pursued O.J. Simpson fleeing in a Ford Bronco, a New York Times columnist noted that the chase was the "real-life fulfillment" of "Fahrenheit 451."

Bradbury points to a more current example. "Look at the Chandra Levy case," he says. "It's become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it."

The fictional roots of "Fahrenheit 451's" vision of mass censorship even resemble the complaints of modern media critics.

In the novel, Fire Captain Beatty explains to Montag, the conflicted fireman, that their government didn't ban reading. Books were simply marginalized as an increasingly inoffensive media and a growing population embraced infotainment at the expense of "slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology."

Says Beatty: "Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists ... The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! ... Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling."

Bradbury scored yet another prognostication bull's-eye in his 1953 short story "The Murderer," wherein a man is imprisoned for wrecking "machines that yak-yak- yak." The most offensive devices were the "radio wristwatch" communicators.

Said the electronics murderer: "... my friends and wife phoned every five minutes. What is there about such 'conveniences' that makes them so temptingly convenient? ... Convenient for my office, so when I'm in the field with my radio car there's no moment when I'm not in touch. In touch! There's a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather."

As retribution, the murderer jams radio wristwatch signals on a commuter bus and delights in the "terrible, unexpected silence" he creates: "The bus inhabitants faced with having to converse with each other."

Substitute a few product terms and "The Murderer" could be passed off as modern nonfiction. True, Dick Tracy also wore a primitive cellphone on his wrist, but Bradbury intuitively grasped how annoyingly demanding and oddly isolating such technology could become.

Today Bradbury continues to criticize modern innovations, putting him in the seemingly contradictory position of being a sci-fi writer who's also a technophobe. He famously claims to have never driven a car (Bradbury finds accident statistics appallingly unacceptable; he witnessed a deadly car accident as a teen). He is scornful of the Internet (telling one reporter it's "a big scam" by computer companies) and ATMs (asking, "Why go to a machine when you can go to a human being?") and computers ("A computer is a typewriter," he says, "I have two typewriters, I don't need another one").

By mocking the electronic shortcuts and distracting entertainment that replace human contact and active thinking, Bradbury shows his science fiction label is misplaced. He cares little for science or its fictions. The author of more than 30 books, 600 short stories and numerous poems, essays and plays, Bradbury is a consistent champion of things human and real. There is simply no ready label for a writer who mixes poetry and mythology with fantasy and technology to create literate tales of suspense and social criticism; no ideal bookstore section for the author whose stories of rockets and carnivals and Halloween capture the fascination of 12-year-olds, while also stunning adult readers with his powerful prose and knowing grasp of the human condition.

One secret to Bradbury's lifelong productivity is that his play and his work are the same. When asked, "How often do you write?" Bradbury replies, "Every day of my life -- you got to be in love or you shouldn't do it."

His new novel, "From the Dust Returned," will be published by William Morrow in October. When I phoned his Los Angeles home for a 9 a.m. interview, Bradbury was thoughtful and cranky, and told me he'd already written a short story.

What makes a great story?

If you're a storyteller, that's what makes a great story. I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor. And that with my stories, you can remember it because I grew up on Greek myths, Roman myths, Egyptian myths and the Norse Eddas. So when you have influences like that, your metaphors are so strong that people can't forget them.

You've been critical of computers in the past. But what about programs that aid creativity? Do you think using a word processor handicaps a writer?

There is no one way of writing. Pad and pencil, wonderful. Typewriter, wonderful. It doesn't matter what you use. In the last month I've written a new screenplay with a pad and pen. There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

What about video games? If young Ray Bradbury from 1940 were here today, would he play video games where a person can experience a simulation of space travel?